In Bloom by Liz Allan review – an electric debut of grunge and teen spirit

Four fatherless girls in a band set out to escape their deprived Australian coastal town, in a dark, raw tale of friendship and abuse Liz Allan’s powerful debut novel smells unmistakably like teen spirit. Plunging the reader into the cauldron of suburban malaise that is an Australian seaside resort in 1994, it is narrated collectively by the Bastards, a band of 14-year-old riot grrrls bringing Kurt Cobain’s gospel to their dead-end backwater – in their own eyes, at least. To their schoolmates...

By Madeleine Feeny